And God appeared on a mountain

On August 4, 2074, God appeared on a mountain in Colorado. For some reason, he’d failed to notify the networks, so they had to rush in drones and choppers with cameras and interrupt regularly scheduled programming and go live to the whole planet very quickly.

He was tall and wide. He was wearing a white robe. His hair was wild and long and gray, and his beard was silver.

The first thing he said was, “I’m from El Salvador and I need a place to stay.”

Then he laughed and muttered, “Joke.”

“But really,” he continued, “you people amaze me. Why haven’t you been paying attention to artists for the past ten thousand years? What’s wrong with you? Sure, I created the universe and laid down all the natural laws, but that was a provisional thing. It wasn’t meant to be permanent. Space, time, energy, law of conservation, the basics…that was just to give you a place to live. Ever since, though, you’ve been fixated on it.

“The artists caught on soon enough. They began inventing their own spaces and times—ever heard of music?—but nobody took them seriously. I’m really disappointed in you.

“You were supposed to realize you could create worlds of your own by the ton, with different rules, any rules, but instead these priests came along and hardened the whole deal into religions.

“Whatever gave you the idea I was in favor of religions? Are you kidding? “Do you really think I want people falling on their knees worshipping me? Why? What kind of a guy do you think I am? Some bloated preposterous dictator? I’m an artist. Isn’t that obvious? And that’s what you should all be by now.

“I’ve got a good mind to uncreate the whole shooting match and force you to start over from scratch on your own, but I know that wouldn’t work. You’d just sit around in the void in a puddle of your own tears and whine and wonder and blather.

“And I certainly don’t want to watch that. The crux of the whole business is you’ve got free will. You can do or not do. By the way, I didn’t give you free will, you always had it. It’s yours. Not mine. You were all homeless vagabonds wandering around and I gave you a place to stay. But not so you could screw it up.

“I wasn’t talking to you as groups or collections or races or anything like that. I was talking all at once to each one of you. I really thought you were artists.

“I don’t know who you thought I was.

“You keep talking about me creating the universe, but it’s apparent that most of you don’t know what that means. You believe it means I have ALL the power. Wow. Where did you get that one from?

“Talk about fairy tales.

“I’m painting in my studio. I’m playing the piano. I’m writing symphonies. I’m inventing different kinds of science. That’s what I do. I took a little time off a few billion years ago to make this universe, but since then I’ve only shown up now and then to peek in.

“This planet of yours…it looks like one big hospital now. Is that what you want to do? Play doctor for the next few thousand years? Diagnose each other? Pretend all twelve billion of you are victims? Where did you get that gig from?

“If you’re staging one grand play on that theme, I have to tell you it’s a flop. It should have closed way back when. It’s a dud. That’s my review.

“Maybe I made it too easy for you. Invented too much space and time. Maybe I should have brought in monsters, real ones, not the ones in your heads. You know, created a threat from the outside.

“Who knows? But try to get with the idea that…how can I explain it…if this universe started out as an idea in my mind, you can see it as an idea in your mind, too. It’s a temporary housing project.

“Yeah, I made it with symmetry and harmony and balance and repeating ratios, but that’s just because I was in a hurry, so you could get out of the rain, so to speak. I used simple blueprints.

“Believe me, I can do other things.

“Anyway, don’t get hung up on the housing project. And if you have any sense, you’ll stop listening to those priests. They’re petty little control freaks.

“I could take you on a tour of history and show you how they grabbed on to what poets were writing and stole it and edited it and used it to found their cheap cosmologies, their religions.

“But I don’t have much time. I have a meeting with Vin Van Gogh—you don’t think he’d come back here for another go around, do you, after what happened to him the last time? And I’m having lunch with Orson Welles. I wrote a script and he’s looking it over.

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.

My brother who is also an artist, showed me at Christmas what he was doing recently.

Every morning, the first thing he does, is he takes a white sheet of paper and draws with a pen, just lines in all directions (straight, curves, etc.) without thinking about it or even looking at it. He just let himself go.

Then he has breakfast, takes a shower, get dressed and comes back at the table, looking and meditating on what he drew.

He says that he sees all sort of things in his drawing and that it inspires him for future paintings and sort of give him the mood of the day.

He calls it: His collection of Daily Signatures.

I think this is a brilliant idea!

Starting the first day of the new year, I will be doing the same and see where it leads me.

That’s really, really good! Also, this type of ‘exercise’ — that your brother is doing, is in the spirit of what Jon talks about — regarding various “imagination exercises” — in his “Exit From The Matrix” collection.